Where to Invest in Africa 2021: A focus on Cote d'Ivoire

The eighth country within our overall rankings in our 'Where to Invest in Africa 2021' is Cote d'Ivoire.

Entering this crisis, this economy was growing by over 7%. It's one of the fastest growing economies across the continent.

What has been supportive of this? Well, it goes without saying that they have been part of a wider IMF programme, which allowed them to focus their fiscal efforts towards areas in the economy that need spend.

They've managed to reduce a lot of recurrent and wasteful spend from their operational budget and in the process of improving the tax revenue across the economy. That's just but one pillar.

Secondly, they've managed to invest aggressively in the private sector - across the board, from the logistics sector to agriculture. They've managed to improve conditions for a lot of farmers that are trading not only in cocoa, but also in palm oil and other products that they're selling internationally, such as cotton.

They've got a diversified export base. But at the same time, they're making the right moves in ensuring that investments into this market remains the same that we saw coming into this crisis, as afterwards.

Yes, they have had some challenges on the political front, but that also seems to have fully abated during the course of 2020.

It definitely is one of our top 10 economies to watch in Africa over the next few years.